News Posts

When night falls on Thursdays at the Museum, a group of people carrying sketchpads and charcoal enters the doors and heads to the animal halls. For over 30 years, Stephen C. Quinn, an artist in the Museum’s Exhibition Department and an expert on dioramas, has led a special evening course on Animal Drawingthat teaches students the art of drawing nature using the Museum’s famous dioramas and displays. This spring’s session will begin on Thursday, March 15. Below, Quinn answers a few questions about the course.

In early January, the Museum posted a Science Bulletin showing humpback whales and bottlenose dolphins apparently at play in the wild. Off the coast of Hawaii, whales repeatedly lifted dolphins from the ocean and let them slide down their heads back into the water. If you haven’t already, watch the viral video below, which recently reached 1.5 million views on YouTube.

Science Bulletins is a production of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education, and Technology (NCSLET), part of the Department of Education at the Museum. Click here to learn more.

Ornithologists generally discover new species by collecting them in the wild. But early in the 20th century, Museum ornithologist James P. Chapin found one on a hat.

In 1913, Chapin, while serving as an assistant to German taxidermist and photographer Herbert Lang on what would become known as the Lang-Chapin Expedition to the Belgian Congo, came upon a native of the Ituri forest wearing a headdress with a distinctive feather. To the young naturalist, it suggested a pheasant or peacock, a strange possibility since these birds were native to Asia. Curious, he took it.

One of the amazing things about working on an exhibition is having the chance to incorporate our own research—sometimes, very recent research.

Within the past year, including just last December, my colleague, Museum Research Associate David Gruber (CUNY), and I have gone on multiple expeditions to the Cayman Islands and the Exumas, Bahamas, to photograph a coral wall and its inhabitants at night using special lights and filters to capture biofluorescence.

The phenomenon of biofluorescence results from the absorption of electromagnetic radiation at one wavelength by an organism, followed immediately by its re-emission at a longer, lower-energy wavelength. With special cameras, we captured brilliant red, green, and orange fluorescing corals, anemones, mollusks, marine worms, and a myriad of fishes, including sharks and rays.

Gospel, jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, soul music, and hip-hop are the result of an ever-evolving African-American musical journey that has produced unique musical forms and traditions. The Museum will celebrate this legacy on Saturday, February 18, with the Global Weekends program The African-American Musical Mosaic, which will include performances by the Harlem Quartet, First Corinthian Baptist Church Choir, Charles Mack, Sandra Reaves-Phillips, and a special collaboration between Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of the hip-hop group Run-DMC and the IMPACT Repertory Theatre choir. In this video, DMC shares what performing at the Museum’s event means to him.